The Hypocrisy of Bush

Bush supporters like to talk about how one of Bush's strengths is that he is always consistent. Yet, it is clear they are ignoring the inconsistency, indeed, the hypocrisy, found in Bush's positions.

For example, here is what Marianne Horinko, a Bush advisor on his environmental policy, says about his position on Global Warming. [Ed: Questions from interviewer, Steve Inskeep, are paraphrased; her answers were captured directly from the audio.]

The President is not afraid to take action on this, but he wants to take the right action.

[During the 2000 campaign Bush promised to deal with greenhouse gases, leaving the impression that he says one thing and does another.]

...President Bush was simply recognizing what many people have thought for a long time which is before we take policy action, we need to make sure that there is world consensus about what to do across all of the nations.

[Why does President Bush treat this differently than National Security?]

For us to move alone unilaterally in the United States, could cost us an enormous amount of jobs and an enormous amount of investment and at the end of the day not have a real impact because those greenhouse gases generated by those jobs and that investment would simply be sent to another country. We need something where all of the countries of the world are united holding hands saying we're going to reduce greenhouse gases togeher.

Huh? So it is okay to act unilaterally on an unnecessary war of choice without regard to the cost in both lives and treasury or the fact that at the end of the day we will have nothing to show for it (because the Iraqis will force us out sooner or later) while destroying the global consensus we need to really address terrorism?